The usual apologies, dear friends, for my lateness in blogging. I moved house-sits twice in five days and each move takes a good half day out of my life. Not that I resent it, of course, because without the house sitting I could not spend time in Perth, Western Australia, my most favourite city in the world.

My friend Ellen returned from Europe last Wednesday, full of the wonders of the Hermitage, the Kremlin and the Louvre. After touring in the UK, France and Spain, she joined a vast gathering of choristers from all over the world to take part in two performances of Verdi's Requiem, one each in St Petersburg and Moscow. Quite the trip of a lifetime, and I am looking forward to seeing all her photos and memorabilia. She brought me a lovely gift: a CD called We Sing to You, which features Anima, a choral group associated with of one of the six churches that stand within the grounds of the Kremlin. The music soars to heaven, carrying the listener with it, and I know I shall have many hours of listening pleasure from it. You can learn more about Anima here.

Once Ellen was home and settled, I moved to Sara's house for the weekend, waiting for her "mum" to return, and then I moved on to the home of e-buddy Anudhara, who occasionally blogs at More Notes from the Edge Anudhara has a delightful home in a southern suburb of Perth, wa-ay down south of my familiar territory of the inner northern suburbs. She has a lovely garden here and a friendly, lively companion in the person of Freddie, a dear little bitza whose ancestors obviously included a lineage of West Highland terriers. Freddie and I will have fun together for the next ten days while Anudhara visits family living even farther down south. Four hours drive farther, in fact, which takes you to about as far south as you can go without donning wetsuit and goggles.

You will (I hope) be pleased to know that I have only another ten scenes to write and the WIP will come to its final full stop. Since I started Robert Olen Butler's regimen of getting up early and writing before breakfast while I'm still in the "dream space", I have written over 40,000ww. True, that's an average of only 900ww words a day, but seeing as I only wrote about 40,000 words in the whole year before that, it's obviously a vast improvement! My new housesit is in quite an isolated area as far as public transport goes, so I intend to do my own personal ten day retreat while I’m here. So, a scene a day for ten days and I should be able to tell you that the wretched WIP is finished. It's only taken two and half years! I shall have to learn to write books much faster than that, given that I am already 65 years old and have formulated the ambition of having at least one trilogy published before I succumb to the dementia that unfortunately afflicts my family.

Two of the scenes are going to take a lot of work, and I'll cover my back by admitting that I possibly won't get these finished in the ten days. One of my characters is a young man who has two relationships, one after the other. The first is with a woman who ensorcels, uses and controls him. When he finally sees through her wiles, he moves on and quite by accident falls in with a young woman whose only earlier sexual experience was a rape. They spend one night together in which they meet as equals in their vulnerability and need for healing. I want to use these two sex scenes to show the growth that takes place in the young man's journey to maturity: a darned big ask for a writer almost totally inexperienced in writing sex scenes! Writing buddy Laney Cairo has been kind enough to give me some pointers so I hope I can do justice to her tuition.

Reading-wise, I'm still on with Marcus Herniman's The Siege of Arrandin. This man's world-building is truly remarkable in its inventiveness and attention to detail. These very strengths make it a slow read, and it's getting close to the next deadline for The Specusphere. I'll probably have to set Mr Herniman aside for a week or two and read at least one of the three books I've been intending to review. Too many fine writers – and far too little time!